Golden Era/GI Generation: "A man doesn't wear shorts"

[FedoraFan112390]

I remember once I was talking to my (now deceased) grandmother. She told me how back in the day, in the 1950s at least, my grandfather was criticized for wearing T-Shirts outside. She said his own aunt would say to her, "How can you marry a man who goes outside in his underwear?", some of his older relatives (who were born around 1900 let's say) thought it was kind of disgraceful. I've heard other things too, that back in that time - 40s, 50s, 60s - a man did not wear shorts; it was considered, at the time, immature or something along those lines? I know my stepgrandfather (b. 1917) never, ever wore shorts; even the grandfather I mentioned who wore a t-shirt, has never worn a pair of shorts.

Am curious if it was just an ethnic (my family is Italian and Irish, conservative Catholic people) thing or if back in the day there was a big stigma toward men wearing shorts or a t-shirt?

 

[Stanley Doble]

T shirts were considered underwear. In WW2 sailors and soldiers got in the habit of wearing T shirts for work, especially in hot climates. After the war some continued to do so. T shirts and jeans for washing the car, working in the garden, and so forth.

The older generation (their parents) may have thought this was going too far but it could hardly be called immodest or indecent, not when topless bathing suits for men had been around since the early thirties.

Shorts were considered beach wear in the US although in hot climates the Brits, French, Australians etc thought nothing of wearing shorts as work wear or military uniforms.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We have quite a few thirties and forties-vintage pictures of my grandfather sitting around with the relatives on the doorstep on a hot summer day in an athletic-type sleeveless undershirt, and he was a middle-aged man by then. It was always his custom to sit on the porch and listen to the ballgame in his undershirt, but he wouldn't have gone to the store that way.

This was something that working-class men of his generation did as a very ordinary thing, and nobody said anything about it. I can even remember him eating supper in his undershirt, with his suspenders down and the top button of his pants undone -- there was no air-conditioning in the house, and it got very hot in the kitchen in August.

The only adult pictures of him wearing shorts that we have were when he was playing semi-pro basketball in the twenties, and shorts were part of the uniform. He never, so far as I know, owned a pair of street shorts, nor did any other man I knew of his generation.

The stereotype of a summer tourist here, however, for a very long time, has been of a man in madras-plaid Bermuda shorts worn with white socks and black or brown loafers. That style was very common in the postwar era, and is still worn on our streetstoday by elderly upper-middle-class men who were in their prime in the forties or fifties.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Another fellow who liked to wear his undershirt at the supper table. Navy Petty Officer Hugh Massman relaxes with his wife and baby, Washington D. C., 1943.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I do know that in Victorian times that a gentleman would never appear in public sans a frock coat or a sack coat. Going around in shirt, tie, and vest was considered unbecoming.

Remember the Civil War movie, Gettysburg, where Martin Sheen played Robert E. Lee? There's a scene where he's having a moment conversing with his horse Traveler in shirt, cravat, and vest. Marse Robert would never have done that.

 

[tonyb]

I don't go out in shorts and T-shirts. I rarely wear short-sleeved shirts of any type.

Fine by me if others do, I just don't like the way I look in such attire. I want buttons, and a collar, and sleeves. And I want my legs covered.

 

[Big J]

I appreciate the history of underwear becoming outerwear, and I think that if you're not playing sports, at the beach, under 12, or a colonial European soldier in the far-flung reaches of the empire, that it is very hard indeed for a man to look decent in shorts.

But I can't help wondering how hot and sweaty, and just plain stinky, pre- shorts and T-shirts as outerwear era men must have been in most summer climates. It must have generated huge amounts of laundry everyday, and reduced the life of clothes accordingly.

 

[LizzieMaine]

B. O. was very common in the Era, as the entire history of Lifebuoy Soap advertising will reveal. Making people wary of it was one of the Boys' early triumphs.

In other words, "Rich People Stink Too."

 

[emigran]

My grandfather B.1896, an Italian immigrant and subsequent business owner would always wear an "outfit" even if he was mowing the lawn... and if he wore shorts in summer it would be with black or white knee high socks with black sandals and a camp shirt...never out or about with undershirt and certainly no such thing as polo shirt.

 

[Fading Fast]

My grandparents (born between 1870-ish and 1890s) were always dressed - men in suits or sport coats with ties. The suit jacket or sport coat would be taken off on warm days, but it was always with them. I don't remember them wearing - and doubt they ever ever did wear - shorts or t-shirts - ever. And on my mother's side they were poor - period.

On my father's side, it was just his mother as her husband had died in the '30s and she never remarried, but she too, was always "dressed" in public. My parents (born in 1924 and 1932) were much less formal than that - but still, no t-shirts or shorts in public. And I can only emphasize this, it didn't then and in retrospect doesn't feel like "a put on" or something - we were of pretty modest means anyway, dressing in public was just how they were wired to think. My parents never hid their very modest upbringings, their modest educations and they never looked down on others for things like clothes or finances (but would judge someone for lack of integrity) - they just learned a certain way to dress in public and that was how they thought.

 

[Haversack]

It should not be forgotten that in the early part of 20th C. America that among the aspirational classes it was customary for boys to wear short pants, (particularly knickers), and socks. It was one of the milestones of growing up when you got your first pair of long trousers. Members of the G.I. generation may not personally have experienced this custom, but it was still extant in popular culture and memory.